I am a political activist who has worked and lived in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog chronicles my time in Palestine and also provides news and analysis about Palestine and the situation on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

by Institute for Middle East Understanding

Although Israel's latest military assault
on Gaza has ended, its 47-year military occupation of the Palestinian
territories persists, and the Palestinians who remain in Gaza face no
relief from the harsh living conditions imposed by Israel's eight-year
military blockade of one of the most densely populated areas in the
world. This infographic offers a breakdown of how Israel's policies –
which predate Operation Protective Edge and have been internationally
criticized for their systematic human rights abuses – continue to
obstruct Palestinians in Gaza from their most basic needs, making their
daily lives a struggle.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Dear friends, Socialist Alternative, which I am also a member off, has been one of the most active groups on university campuses supporting the struggle for a free Palestine and opposing Israel's human rights abuses in Gaza and Palestine. Due to Socialist Alternative's uncompromising support for Palestine, Zionists recently launched a digital attack on Red Flag, the paper put out by Socialist Alternative - which I regularly write for - disabling its website for a week.

Socialist Alternative are also battling against rightwing and Zionist attacks on campus which have seenthe refusal to pass solidarity motions in support of Gaza and attempts to disaffiliate, attempts to stop the affiliation of Student for Palestine clubs, as well as attempts to censor and punish Socialist Alternative clubs for supporting Palestine and opposing Israel's human rights abuses.

In an blatant attack on free speech and concerted attempt to censor Pro-Palestine students, the University of Western Australia Student Guild has recently suspended the Socialist Alternative club on that campus for putting up posters about a meeting critical of Israel, for allegedly swearing at someone with the alleged complaint of this being made 1.5 years after the alleged incident supposedly took place and because a student took offense at t-shirts opposing Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.

As the petition opposing this attack on Socialist Alternative have noted, "such allegations would be thrown out by anything resembling a court, yet the UWA Socialist Alternative club has been judged guilty before a hearing has taken place."

This is clearly an attempt to censor pro-Palestine students who are active in speaking out against not only injustice in Palestine but also in Australia and elsewhere. Socialist Alternative are asking people to stand in solidarity with their students members on the University of WA by signing on to the following petition (click here)

You can also support them by emailing the UWA Student Guild directly (please keep any emails polite, while stating your opposition to this blatant attack on free speech and attempt to censor students for their political stance):

Dear friends,I am posting up an image of rare Israeli archival document about the Palestnian Nakba. The image of the document was originally posted by my fellow activist, Israeli-Canadian academic Noa Shaindlinger who is currently conducting PHD research on --- Noa came across the document a few weeks ago during her researchNoa notes "That contrary to the efforts of Israel,
the issue of the Nakba has never ceased to elicit public interest and
that the plight of the Palestinian refugees keeps being widely
discussed. I urge everyone to keep the refugees in mind and to actively
advocate for the only just solution, which is repatriation and
reparations".

Comment about the document by Israeli historian, Professor Ilan Pappe:

The Ethnic Cleanser’ Horror List

The document below is a horrific shopping list of the Israeli army for a
period of seventeen days between 12 May to 29 May 1948. It details the
ethnic cleansing of dozens of villages and small towns within that short
period which ended with the forced displacement of 35,000 men, women
and children in the second wave of the massive de-Arabizaiton of
Palestine (in the first way all the cities and towns of Palestine were
depopulated).

It is a rare document in its explicit language
and graphic description. For each village there is the original number
of population, a date of occupation, a comment on the scope of the
eviction (in this case all those mentioned were fully evicted) and the
reason for the depopulation. In most cases the cause is ‘our action’,
in others ‘the result of terrorising and intimidation through rumours’,
yet in others ‘our ultimatum’ and in few cases the eviction of a nearby
village was enough to convince the population in neighbouring villages
to leave.

It begins three days before the declaration of the
state of Israel, before the Arab governments decide to send troops into
Palestine, while Britain is responsible for law and order and while the
Israeli David allegedly was fight[ing] for his life. So people were not
expelled because there was a war or because they took part in a war.
They were expelled because there is no way of having a Jewish state in
Palestine without ethnic cleansing of the native population.

There was no beheading of journalists, this is true, there were however
many summary executions not of enemy soldiers but of villagers and the
rape was much more limited that the one reported by the poor Yazidi
survivors, but it did happen. The big picture was DAASHI enough. The
difference was that not one Western Government condemned or rebuked this
crime against humanity. A silence that contributed to the dismal
reality we live through today in the Middle East.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Dear friends,I am a little late in posting this up due to being swamped with other work. In the last week, 43 elite Israeli Occupation Force officers from the IOF Intelligence Unit have issued a letter refusing to serve. The letter by the soldiers reveal the exact nature of Israel's control over Palestinian lives and the intelligence gathering (ie. spying) is not about ensure the security and safety of Israel or its citizens, it is about controlling and oppressing Palestinians, about turning them into collaborators. It is about undermining opposition to Israel's human rights abuses and oppression of the Palestinian people.

I have included below an interview published in YNET with some of the IOF Intelligence refuseniks, as well as Gideon Levy's article from Haaretz.In solidarity, Kim

In letter sent
to PM and chief of staff, 43 officers, soldiers, graduates of the IDF's
elite intelligence unit, 8200, say they will no longer report for
reserve duty related to the Palestinian arena. 'No one asks himself if
the targets we collect for the air force justify ruining the lives of
1.5 million people,' they say.

Elior Levy, YNET, 12 September 2014

For D., it happened
after his discharge from the army, when he saw the movie, The Lives of
Others, about the Stasi, Communist East Germany's secret police, who
listened in on people and thus invaded their private lives. "I was
shocked," he says. "On the one hand, I identified with the victims, with
the persecuted side, who were denied rights that are so fundamental
that I take them for granted. On the other hand, I suddenly realized
that during my military service, I was on the side of the persecutors,
that we do the exact same thing, only far more efficiently."
The feelings of unease befell N. much earlier, already during the
course of her military service, when as a representative of Unit 8200
she witnessed an assassination operation in which the target was
mistakenly identified and a child was killed instead.

(Photo: Tal Shahar)

"In Dan Halutz's famous speech, with the controversial remark
about a light tap on the wing (following the 2002 targeted killing of
the head of Hamas' military wing, Salah Shehadeh, that also resulted in
the death of 14 civilians, E.L.), he essentially said to the pilots,
'You're ok, you don't see the full intelligence picture and you carry
out orders, and so you can sleep well at night,'" N. says.
"So the pilots aren't responsible for the killing because they
are simply carrying out orders, and the people at 8200, too, aren't
responsible for the killing because they carry out intelligence work
only and pass on the information. Everyone shirks responsibility. So who
then isn't supposed to sleep well at night? I think we all signed this
letter because we realized that we aren't able to sleep well at night."
Read full letter (Hebrew)
D. and N. are two of the 43 officers and soldiers serving as
reservists in the elite intelligence unit, 8200, who this week signed a
letter in which they declare they refuse to play any part in actions
against Palestinians and while therefore no longer report for reserve
duty in that arena. "Our consciences won't allow us," they wrote, "to
continue to serve this system and violate the rights of millions of
people."

This is the first time that reserve members of the unit have
drawn up a letter of refusal. "The general perception is that service in
the Intelligence Corps is devoid of moral dilemmas and functions only
to reduce violence and harm to the innocent," the letter reads. "During
the course of our service, however, we learned that intelligence is an
integral part of the military control over the territories. The
Palestinian population, under military rule, is totally exposed to
espionage and surveillance on the part of Israeli intelligence. In light
of this, we have come to the conclusion that as individuals who served
in Unit 8200, we, too, bear responsibility for the situation and are
obliged to take action. We call on current and future Intelligence Corps
soldiers, and the citizens of Israel at large, to sound their voices
against these wrongs and to work towards bringing them to an end. We
believe that the future of the State of Israel, too, depends upon it."
In their first interview, the reservists who signed the letter
offer a rare glimpse of the soul-searching they went through in the
framework of their service in the Israel Defense Forces' largest
intelligence-gathering unit, which has long served as a breeding ground
for the Israeli hi-tech industry and sends many of its graduates into
high-powered positions in the economy and society. The incidents they
speak about, they adamantly stress, have no connection to Operation
Protective Edge, in which they didn't take part.

A Pandora's Box of thoughts

Six members of the unit came to the interview, which took place at
the apartment of one of them, armed with written testimonies from other
signatories. The people behind the initiative note that most of those
who signed the letter do reserve duty in Unit 8200 and, from the point
of the view of the IDF, are available for call-up at any given time.
Some until now have exercised their refusal to do reserve duty under
various pretenses, during Operation Protective Edge too.

(Photo: Tal Shahar)

"The
unit is very much like a family, so the commander calls your directly
to see if you can come for reserve duty; there's no mediation by a
liaison officer with an official call-up," explains R. "We developed a
system of avoiding duty using different excuses every time – an exam or a
trip abroad. Thus, in essence, I avoided reporting for reserve duty
without declaring that I refuse."
They are very sure of themselves and the dramatic step they have
taken; nevertheless, the stress they are under is plain to see. Some
are studying towards advanced degrees; others have already found
positions in industry. They are the kind of people that Israeli society
is happy to embrace and take pride in when all is well. But now – as is
evident to them – they are about to pay the price.
"And that's the hardest part for me – that people will view what
we are doing as treason," confesses S., a reservist officer from the
unit and the highest-ranking signatory on the letter. "We all know that
such a step places us beyond the boundaries of the Israeli consensus.
Very many people support us and identify with us, but they fear the
reactions and the personal price they would have to pay, and so they
refused to sign," he says.
"I approached several people, and a good friend of mine from the
unit said to me, 'I agree 100 percent with what is said in the letter,
but I am afraid it would be detrimental to the career I am planning,'"
N. relates. "Even the person who told me about the initiative didn't
sign in the end because he got cold feet."
S. has no second thoughts about his decision, but is agonizing
about the potential implications. "We want to reach the Israeli public
and not to be shunned by it," he says. Our wish is for the message to be
understood, for it to be a statement by people concerned about the
situation here and who are doing it because we care and not for the
purpose of burning bridges. But I am sure there will be elements who
will exploit the letter and call it treason, just like they do these
days to anyone who defies the consensus."
The idea of the letter had been simmering in their minds for a
year. It started with a regular chat among members of the unit who
remained in touch after their military service. "After my discharge, I
felt like I had a Pandora's Box of thoughts," D. relates. "I started
talking to a few people and discovered that many feel the same. It was
all went ahead very cautiously. We spoke about our thoughts and the
questions, and we thought about courses of action that we could choose.
We began initially by formulating a declaration that we could stand
behind. It took a very long time and went through various versions.
"It was important for us for the letter to be precise and
focused so that it would win as widespread support as possible. Our
refusal to serve relates only to the Palestinian arena and not to the
other arenas with which the unit deals. Precisely because we think that
refusal is a very radical and drastic step, particularly in Israeli
society, it was important for us to make it clear in the letter that we
are refusing only because from a moral perspective we are unable to be a
tool to intensify the military control in the territories."
After they formulated the letter, they began to share the idea
with other people in the unit – friends to friends. Senior members of
the unit and its commanders were unaware of the initiative. "The
approaches were made in face-to-face encounters, with us beating about
the bust until we felt confident enough to speak about the issue
directly. It all went ahead discreetly so that it didn't reach those who
didn't need to know about it."

(Photo: Tal Shahar)

The quiet after the blast

The testimonies paint a picture that may trouble a portion of the
public, but many will surely think that the actions of the unit are
legitimate, certainly during periods of armed conflict.

"A change came over me during Operation Cast Lead, in 2008,"
says N., an Arabic translator at the Unit 8200's base who is responsible
for the Palestinian arena. "When the operation started, something
didn't seem quite right to me. Instead of attacking rocket and weapons
dumps in the Gaza Strip, as defensive preparations for the campaign
against Hamas, the air force attacked a police parade. The strike
resulted in the death of 89 Palestinian policemen.
"I was just a regular soldier at the time, but I wanted the
chain of command to know that I viewed the action as immoral and
problematic, and not only because of the police casualties. These were
precious hours in which we were supposed to be performing our duty – to
prevent rockets from being launched against Israeli civilians – and this
action didn't serve that purpose. Israel's home front was left exposed
to rocket barrages, without the matter being dealt with as it should
have been. The officer in charge agreed to convey my thoughts up the
chain, but I didn’t get an answer.
"During the course of the operation, I worked with various teams
that were involved in gathering and translating intelligence
information about targets in the Gaza Strip. I remember the quiet that
befell the rooms in which we worked in the seconds after the air force
bombed the targets, a tense quiet with the hope for a hit. When a hit
was confirmed, applause and cries of joy filled the room. The identikits
that adorned the walls of the rooms were marked with Xs. I had a very
hard time dealing with the fact that no one was interested if anyone
else was hurt. No one stopped to ask himself if the targets we collect
for the air force planes justify the total destruction of the lives of
1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip.
"During the operation, the air force attacked the home of Nizar
Rayyan (a Hamas leader in Gaza, E.L.), and 18 civilians were killed,
mostly members of his family. On another occasion, there was an
attempted strike against the leaders of Hamas' military wing. When the
air force reported human casualties, the room was full of tension and
expectation to see if the casualties were the intended targets of the
attack. When it emerged that they were others, cries of disappointment
echoed in the room – not because people were randomly killed, but
because they weren't the ones we were looking for. It's hard for me to
imagine what my base looked like during Operation Protective Edge; it
probably looked the same as it did back then – but only more
pronounced."
The assassination policy is particularly troubling to the
consciences of those who signed the letter due to the fact that mistakes
that occur claim the lives of innocent people, children too sometimes.
"We provide the intelligence for the operation, incriminate the
individual and pass on the information to the air force," N. relates.
"The unit always has representatives in the field, in the Judea and
Samaria Division and in the Gaza Division. Once, when I was the
representative, a suspect was identified nearby a weapons dump in Gaza
and we thought he was our objective. I remember the picture on the
screen – the suspect in an orchard, an explosion, the smoke settling and
his mother running towards him. We could then see that it was a child.
The body was small. We realized we had screwed up. It was quiet,
unpleasant. And then we had to continue. The mood was harsh, but there
were more things to do.
"My duties there were allegedly technical. You're in an office,
looking at a picture from a helicopter and the maps. It's very easy to
cut yourself off from it and feel distant. It wasn't my job there to ask
questions. They told me what they needed from me and that's what I did.
I don't even know if there was an inquiry into what happened."
Most of the people in the unit do what they are told without
asking questions. The signatories explain this by noting that from the
outset, already during their course, the trainees are led to understand
that when it comes to 8200, there is no such thing as a manifestly
unlawful order. Some of the signatories, who served as instructors,
conveyed this very message themselves, to their soldiers, despite the
fact that doubt had started to creep in.
"They constantly told us that we are not the ones who are in the
field, not the ones who are firing, and that it's not our job at all to
make that decision," A. says. "There is something of an alternative
mechanism in the unit that is called 'personal duty to report,' which
means that you must voice your concerns if something is troubling you;
but in some instances, they are clearly simply covering their asses."
The story of Second Lieutenant A. hovers constantly over the
conversation with the signatories. A. was a young officer in Unit 8200
in 2003, at the height of the second intifada, who refused to pass on
intelligence in preparation for an airstrike on a structure in the
southern Gaza Strip due to concerns that innocent civilians would be
harmed in the attack. The airstrike was intended to serve as a response
to a terror attack in Tel Aviv's Neve Sha'anan Square in January that
same year in which 23 people were killed. The target selected was a
structure belonging to Fatah. According to sources inside the
intelligence community, the instructions were to check when there were
people in the building, no matter who they were, so that the green light
for the airstrike could be given. The airstrike was called off due to
A's refusal. He was tried, stripped of his position and assigned to
administrative duties.
The incident led to a decision to conduct a lesson in all of the
unit's courses that is based on the military inquiry into the affair.
At the end of the lesson, the instructors lead the trainees to the
conclusion that there is no such thing as a manifestly unlawful order.
They discovered in retrospect that the inquiry was grossly deficient and
inaccurate: The findings note that A. was instructed to ensure that the
building was empty so that the airstrike could then take place. "Now,
when I know what really happened in that operation," N. says, "I realize
that all the discussion that took place about it with the trainees were
ridiculous."
"In 2003, at least there was the second lieutenant who refused
to participate in the operation," says A., one of the signatories on the
letter. "There were no such individuals in 2014."

How do say 'homo' in Arabic

The reservists who signed the letter aren't troubled only by the
unit's sterile approach to the assassination policy. According to them,
the Israeli public believes that intelligence is gathered only against
terror activists. They wish to cast light on the fact that a significant
portion of the targets they monitor are innocent civilians who have
nothing to do with military activity against Israel and are of interest
to the intelligence organizations for other reasons. These civilians
have no idea at all that they are intelligence targets, yet they are
treated, according to the signatories, no differently to the terror
elements, and the fact that they are innocent civilians does not
constitute a relevant consideration.

"I had a lot of trouble with the fact that various personal
details were noted as being of importance, details that could be used to
extort people and turn them into collaborators," N. relates. "They told
us at the base that if we uncover a 'juicy' detail, it is important to
document it – for example, financial stress, sexual orientation, a
severe illness on the part of the individual or a family member, or
medical treatment that they require.
"Once, they played me the recording of a conversation between an
Israeli security official and a Palestinian he was trying to recruit.
There's a part in which he says, 'Your wife's brother, he has cancer,'
and the Palestinian responds, 'So what?' And he says, 'You know, we have
good hospitals.' He was clearly offering the Palestinian something or
threatening him in some way.
"During my service, I collected, among other things, information
about innocent people whose only sin was that they were of interest to
the Israeli defense system for various reasons. If you are a homosexual
who knows someone who knows a wanted individual, Israel will make your
life a misery. If you required urgent medical care in Israel, the West
Bank or abroad, we looked for you. The State of Israel will allow you to
die before it allows you to leave for medical treatment without you
first providing information about your wanted cousin. Any instance that
leads to snaring an innocent individual who can be extorted in return
for information or in order to recruit him as a collaborator was gold
for us and for the entire Israeli intelligence community. In the
training course, you actually learn and memorize different words for
homo in Arabic."
The immense power in the hands of the soldiers and officers in
the unit, most of them in their early 20s, could also be – the
signatories to the letter say – the power to corrupt. "When I began my
duties, I was surprised by the scope of the responsibility that rested
on my shoulders," N. says. "I felt as if I had a say in important
matters. I could initiate things that had implications for the lives of
the Palestinians, and we exploit this influence that we have over their
lives. Sometimes it involves real damage to the life of an individual,
to his soul. We're talking about extortion and it can screw up their
lives. The overriding approach in the unit is: 'Why not? If it's
possible, then go for it.' I thought it was crazy to be able to do
things I could. We're the bosses."
A number of the signatories note, too, that they found
themselves having to deal with information of a distinctly political
nature, and that this made them feel uncomfortable. "When I joined the
unit, I thought I'd be dealing with thwarting terror, with whatever is
necessary to preserve the security of the state," one of them says. "I
discovered during my service that a large amount of effort in the
Palestinian arena is directed towards things that are not related to
security. I worked on gathering information on political matters. Some
of them were related to objectives that could be seen as serving
security needs, such as undermining Hamas institutions, and others were
not. There were political intelligence objectives that don't even fall
in with the Israeli consensus, such as bolstering the Israeli position
versus that of the Palestinians. Such objectives do not serve the
security system but rather the politicians and their agendas.
"It was very hard for me and others in the department to have to
deal with some of the things we did. There was a particular project
that shocked us when we learned of it. It was clearly something that we
as soldiers are not supposed to do. The information was relayed almost
directly to political elements and not to other arms of the defense
establishment, and this made it very clear to me that it had very little
to do with security needs."
Another problematic issue that arises during service in 8200 is
the unit's spirit. Recordings of wiretapped conversations are kept to
play to trainees and soldiers, without any consideration given to the
fact that this constitutes serious ethical offenses. Sex chats, for
example, are a big hit in the unit.
"I heard about a department that once turned out all the lights
on the floor and played a recording of a sex chat at full volume –
several dozen people listening to a sex chat and everyone cracking up
with laughter," relates one of the signatories. "That's part of the
spirit. And I don't mean only conversations that are stumbled upon by
chance. Soldiers knew who to listen to and when in order to find them.
They would be passed on from one to the other."
Another graduate of the unit spoke of feeling bad knowing, in
precise detail, about the problems of all of the objectives. "It doesn't
feel good to freely speak and laugh about this information. We knew who
was cheating on his wife, with who and how often. There were
conversations about 'funny' medical conditions such as hemorrhoids. It's
part of the way of life in the unit and you call one another over to
listen. Photographs relating to objectives or other Palestinians are
passed around for fun. Family photographs are passed around and jokes
are made about how ugly the children are, and also private pictures that
couples have taken for one another.
"At a certain stage, I distanced myself from the whole story. I
also told the friends around me that it isn’t the right thing to do, but
everyone said that it wasn't hurting anyone. The commanders knew about
it – no question about that. I wouldn't even say they turned a blind eye
because it was clearly acceptable, that there was no problem with it.
The soldiers don't really bother to hide what they are doing."

The consciences of the recruits

Alongside their concerns about the public criticism they expect to
come under, the signatories are already dealing with internal criticism
among their families, who are struggling to come to terms with the
unusual step they have taken. "My family doesn't support my decision to
sign the letter," N. says. "They don't think it's the right thing to do.
They look at me like I'm some kind of radical who is doing something of
no relevance in a democratic country."

R. says his family members are primarily concerned about the
personal ramifications of the letter. "They are worried about me and my
friends and hope that we don't end up paying too high a personal price,"
he comments.
The official letter, which was sent Thursday to the prime
minister, the chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence and the
commander of Unit 8200, bears the signatories' full names and ranks.
Publication of the letter, one can assume, will create much noise, and
may also raise questions and doubts in the minds of 12th graders who are
candidates for service in 8200. The signatories know this, but they
have no intentions of calling on others to refuse to serve in the unit.
"If someone asks me, I'll tell them about the journey I took and
my internal debate and how I feel about my service," A. says. "I will
give him the tools, but every future recruit has his own conscience and
he needs to make his own decisions. These are tough dilemmas, and anyone
who refuses to be recruited into the unit will have to pay a very high
price. On the other hand, he may be in the very same place I was in at
his age – believing that what we do is designed to minimize the killing
of innocent civilians. All I can do is present him with a different
perspective."
The
signatories stress they have no wish to establish a movement behind
them. They view the letter as a mirror held up to society. "All we want
to do is to turn on a warning light in the Israeli public – for them to
understand that we've been there, we've done it, and we can no longer
continue," says S. "We will agree to return to serve in the unit if we
know that the purpose for which we are there is self-defense, and not to
perpetuate the military regime."
****

The elite intel unit
veterans took a milestone in announcing they will no longer serve the
occupation. In their footsteps, perhaps, a few veterans of the Shin Bet
security service will also come forward and talk about what they did at
work.

The 43 veterans of the elite intel unit who announced that they will no longer agree to serve the occupation have made a double contribution to Israeli society. Like
other conscientious objectors, including soldiers and military pilots,
these members of Unit 8200 are courageous and moral. But their refusal
has an additional dimension, the likes of which have never been seen
before in Israel. They etched another scar into the ugly face of the
Israeli occupation, deeper than the ones that preceded it, because it
involves the darkest and most base sides of the occupation’s malignant
routine. In a healthy society, the reservists’ action and their
disclosures would have set off real shock waves. But in Israel, all the
systems of defense, offense and propaganda, of ridicule and denial, have
already been co-opted for the purpose of swiftly burying this important
letter by objector-spies. They,
too, are among the finest of our youth, perhaps the best – almost like
the pilots. Unit 8200, the largest unit of the Israel Defense Forces,
has the right of second pick, after the air force, in selecting
recruits. Their image is sparkling – and their future is assured; tech
firms lie in wait for them. Their military service is free of risk and –
like the pilots – they don’t see their victims up close. Until now,
their service was nearly free of ethical qualms. They do not kill, beat
or carry out arrests, they are jobniks, desk jockeys with prestige, the
kind of child nearly every parent would want. Their weapon is their
intelligence, their computer and other sophisticated instruments; their
bunker is their office. A large part of their work, it must be stressed,
is vital and legitimate. And still, Unit 8200 is Israel’s Stasi. In
contrast to the East German intelligence service, its Israeli successor
targets not citizens of the state, but rather the Palestinians who are
subject to its occupation. Anything may be done to them, using means the
Stasi would have envied. Like the Stasi, it involves not only
intelligence gathering and espionage, but also mechanisms to control,
extort and exploit an entire nation. This is based on erecting an
enormous army of collaborators and informers, recruited through the
vicious exploitation of their weaknesses, needs, illnesses and sexual
orientations. Thanks
to Unit 8200, an entire nation exists without the right to privacy. The
great contribution of the new objectors is that they have told us about
this. In their Arabic studies, they were taught all the forms of the
Arabic word for “homosexual” – because they need it. They were required
to find out about the sexual orientation, health and financial problems
of tens of thousands of individuals. Perhaps there’s a nephew on
Israel’s list of wanted terrorists, perhaps a cousin who’s wanted for
questioning, offering an opportunity for extortion. Perhaps they’ll
agree to talk about the next-door neighbor in exchange for a
chemotherapy treatment; a report in return for surgery; snitching in
exchange for an income boost; a bit of information in return for a night
in Tel Aviv. This
despicable collecting work – there’s no other way to describe it – is
done by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, and “every Jewish mother
should know” this. They collect important security information, and
alongside it also political and personal information, and they mark
targets for assassination. A few of them tried to talk about it over the
weekend, and the radio and television stations rocked with laughter.
The commentators vied with each other for adjectives: “trippy,”
“scandalous,” “negligible,” “spoiled brats” and, worst of all,
“politicos” and “lefties” – in unison, of course. No one came to the
defense of a group of people who, until Thursday, were a source of
pride. Not even activists from the LGBT community, who are called in
after any inappropriate comment about lesbians, gays, bisexuals and
transgenders. They have been silent about the persecution of their
Palestinian counterparts by the state, which brags about its enlightened
attitude toward the gay community. That’s
Israel for you. As long as the members of Unit 8200 were up to their
arms in the filth of the occupation, they were considered principled
young men and women, and were respected. But as soon as they decided
they’d had enough, they became targets for ridicule and ostracism. The
step they have taken is a milestone. In their footsteps, perhaps, a few
veterans of the Shin Bet security service – the other pillar of the
Israeli Stasi in the territories – will also come forward and finally
talk about what they did at work. Their commanders already did,
partially, in “The Gatekeepers.”The
military and media establishment will quickly stomp on the 43
objectors, but perhaps they will not be forgotten. From out of the
deepest darkness, they broke the silence.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Dear friends,please find below an excellent article by Australian political activist and author, Jeff Sparrow, which first appeared in Jacobin Magazine. I have known Jeff for many years both as an activist and in his capacity as editor of one of Australia's oldest political and cultural magazine's, Overland. I also worked closely with Jeff, when he and Antony Loewenstein asked me to contribute a chapter about Palestine and the BDS campaign in Australia to Left Turn, a book look at the left politics in Australia, which they edited. If you would like to check out the book, you can find can order it here.Jeff's article below is an excellent exploration of settler-colonialism both in Australia and Palestine. It examines both the similarities and the differences, as well as the dynamics of settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing.Jeff is also the author of a number of books, including:

Communism: A Love Story (Melbourne University Press, 2007) is a biography of the radical intellectual Guido Baracchi, a founder of the Communist Party of Australia.

Killing: Misadventures in Violence (Melbourne University Press,
2009) is a study of the social and psychological consequences of
executions, combat and animal slaughter. It was a finalist in the
Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing Award 2009.

Left Turn: Political Essays for the New Left (Melbourne University Press, 2012) was co-edited by Sparrow and Antony Loewenstein.

Money Shot: A Journey into Porn and Censorship (Scribe, 2012) "probes the contradictions of our relationship to sex and censure, excess and folly, erotica and vice."

A look back at the subjection of Tasmania shows that
while Israel’s settler colonialism is brutal, it’s hardly without
precedent.

Some weeks ago, Greg Shupak
noted how the extremity of the violence unleashed during Operation
Protective Edge led some to describe Israel’s actions as “irrational.”They were wrong. A settler-colonial state, Israel’s existence
depended first on the forced exodus of Palestinians and then the
repeated destruction of their attempts at self-organization.Israel isn’t unique in this respect. The so-called Black War
between colonists and indigenous people in Eastern Tasmania offers
another example, one that makes a productive (though obviously not
exact) comparison with Gaza, both because it’s less well known to those
in the Global North, but also because a raft of recent historiography
has thrown fresh light on what settler colonization meant for the island
the British originally called Van Diemen’s Land.Nicholas Clements’ new book The Black War
provides a definitive yet accessible account of the conflict. Clements
chronicles the war in chapters that alternate between the perspective of
the settlers and their indigenous opponents, a conceit, as he explains
in the introduction, borrowed from The Palestine-Israeli Conflict: A Beginner’s Guide.
It’s a particularly effective mode of exposition for settlement
narratives because, rather than attempting to adjudicate between the
differing claims of the combatants, it shows how both perspectives arise
from the process of colonization itself.When the Tasmanian landowner George Hobler organized a party of men
to fire on a local tribe, he saw himself as responding to the unprovoked
spearing of one of his servants. Likewise, when two Aborigines attacked
sawyers at a farm near Ben Lomond in March 1831, they seem to have
intended to rescue an indigenous girl living on the property. But the
Black War cannot be understood as simply an accretion of these
individual exchanges. Rather, we need to situate episodic clashes in
their historical context: the establishment and maintenance of a settler
colony that, by its nature, renders the life of indigenous people
unbearable.Think of the usual presentation of the recent Gaza incursion. The
crisis began, we are told, with the kidnapping and killing of three
Israeli teenagers. Of course, that’s an entirely arbitrary starting
point. Why not say that it started the day before that, when an Israeli
airstrike killed a Palestinian man and a ten-year-old? But that too
would be inadequate. As Gabor Maté says,
“There is no understanding Gaza out of context — Hamas rockets or
unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians — and that context is the
longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present
centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood.”The conflict in Tasmania, like the conflict in Gaza, only makes sense as a totality.With the condescension of posterity, it’s easy to dismiss the British
colonists in Van Diemen’s Land as monsters, genocidal racists carrying
out atrocities for reasons unfathomable to liberal-minded folk of the
twenty-first century. Yet, precisely as Israeli officials explained the
assault on Gaza as a defensive reaction to Hamas’ rockets, the Tasmanian
settlers saw themselves as victims, driven to violence by the terror
inflicted by the natives.In December 1827, the land commissioner Roderic O’Connor wrote a
personal letter to the government: “Can we live in a wilderness
surrounded by wretches who watch every opportunity and who take delight
in shedding our blood?” The next year, settlers near Swanport sent “a
statement of the danger … of being ultimately exterminated by the black
natives.”To an outsider, the notion that the whites were in danger of
extermination seems as perverse as the Western media’s portrayal as the
Gaza conflict in terms of the supposed threat to Israel. But, rather
like Israelis today, the colonists explicitly condemned the assessments
of such outsiders, who, they said, could not grasp the reality of their
situation. In 1830, a Clyde Valley settler explained:

We in the interior are in the most imminent daily danger
of our lives and property — of having our houses and barns burnt about
our ears in all directions, and our families butchered by these savages
and are we to be smoothly informed how we are to act, and that, on the
defensive, by a few comfortably seated Gentlemen in their well-furnished
and well-protected houses?

Isaac Deutscher famously described Zionism through a parable about a
man who jumped from a burning house only to injure the person he landed
on below. The analogy accepts Israel’s self-presentation as a refuge
from Nazism, a claim that historically simply isn’t true. But it’s less
often recognized that Deutscher’s fable applies with equal force to
other settler colonies. Many of those arriving in Van Diemen’s Land –
the convicts, but also the soldiers – had no choice of their
destination. Of course, from the perspective of the natives, the
intentions of the settler colonizers scarcely matter.In Tasmania, convicts and ex-convicts were responsible for much of
the bloodletting, so that many of the respectable colonists were able to
disavow any direct involvement in killing Aborigines. But the convicts,
James Boyce concludes in his magisterial Van Diemen’s Land,
“can never be charged with the same level of responsibility as those
whose interests they served, and their scapegoating by both the
government and the free settlers is too obviously self-serving to be
taken as seriously as it often has been.”After all, as the historian of genocide Patrick Wolfe
puts it, settler states “typically seek to distance themselves from the
activities of the ostensibly unofficial frontier mavericks on whose
depredations they depend.” Think, for instance, of the Israeli
government’s relationship to the right-wing settlers in the Occupied
Territories, whose activities they both disavow and encourage.The mainstream consensus about Israel-Palestine holds that peace must
begin with the Palestinians accepting Israel’s right to exist as a
Jewish state. But the Tasmanian example shows how, in fact, that very
demand renders peace — or, at least, any kind of just peace —
impossible.Settler colonization, by definition, must deny the legitimacy of the
native population. The settlement of Australia rested on the doctrine of
terra nullius, which held the land to be legally empty – and Zionism, of course, depends on the same concept.The Zionist slogan of “a land without a people for a people without a
land” did not literally mean that Palestine lacked people, any more
than the British settlers believed Van Diemen’s Land was empty. In both
cases, the absence was not of people but rather “civilized people,” for,
as Land Commissioner Roderic O’Connor explained in 1827, it would be “a
disgrace … to the human race to call [indigenous people] men.”The Australian founders saw the settlement of the colony as an
established fact, with indigenous people relegated to the margins of
society. But the Australian constitution still signaled (albeit in
passing) the fundamental identity of the new nation with the
discriminatory Section 127, which stipulated that “aboriginal natives”
be excluded from official censuses. (In 1967, a referendum deleting that
section passed with overwhelming public support, an event rightly
considered a milestone in the struggle for indigenous rights.)What would it mean, today, to insist that indigenous people accept
Australia as a white or a Christian state? The very question sounds both
absurd and offensive, precisely because explicitly chauvinist
definitions of nationality are so discredited. That’s why Judah Magnes,
the first Chancellor of Israel’s Hebrew University, opposed in 1942 the
idea of a Jewish state because “the slogan ‘Jewish state’ (or
commonwealth) is equivalent, in effect, to a declaration of war by the
Jews on the Arabs.”Likewise, when apologists claim that a state defined by the settler
identity remains necessary to prevent a native massacre, they merely
reveal how deep-seated the colonial mentality remains.In the dying years of apartheid, some liberals opposed the attempts
to break down the structures of the South African colonial regime,
arguing the end of a racially defined state would mean the destruction
of the white minority. William Safire, for instance, complained that
“real political equality” entailed

… majority rule, and nonwhites are the overwhelming
majority in South Africa. That means an end to white government as the
Afrikaners have known it for three centuries; that means the same kind
of black rule that exists elsewhere in Africa, and most white South
Africans would rather remain the oppressors than become the oppressed.

Today, in the context of a multi-racial South Africa, that position seems grotesque.Let’s recall that, in Tasmania, though some of the colonists favored military action, the head of the settlement, Lieutenant Governor Arthur, was an early advocate of what today might be called a two-state solution.In a January 1828, Arthur explained, “The measure which I rather
incline to attempt, is to settle the Aborigines in some remote quarter
of the island, which should be strictly reserved for them, and to supply
them with food and clothing, and afford them protection … on condition
of their confining themselves peaceably to certain limits.”He gave this plan official status in a notice published a few months
later entitled “Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White
Inhabitants.” In other words, as Boyce says, “the goal of colonial
government policy from April 1828 was thus to reach an agreement with
the Aborigines on the division of Van Diemen’s Land.”What were the results of Arthur’s efforts? The most immediate effect
of the supposed partition of Van Diemen’s Land was the intensification
of violence against those indigenous people unfortunate enough to be on
the wrong part of the island. As Boyce writes, the proclamation
“provided the first official sanction for the use of force against
Aborigines for no other reason than that they were Aboriginal.”In other words, it enabled settlers to ethnically cleanse the rest of
the land, since, as Chief Justice Pedder put it at the time, “the
object of this proclamation is their expulsion wherever they may appear
in the settled districts and however harmlessly they may be conducting
themselves.”Moreover, official hopes in a negotiated settlement were largely
abandoned by October 1828, with the colony’s executive council claiming
that the Aborigines’ “treachery” and “lack of government” made them
doubt “if any reliance could be placed upon any negotiations which might
be entered into.” Had Mark Regev been present, he might have declared that, of course, the council wanted peace but it lacked a suitable partner.Yet the war did, in fact, end with a two-state settlement, a result that was disastrous for the indigenous people.George Augustus Robinson arrived in Hobart in 1826, where, as the Australian Dictionary of Biography
explains, he became “secretary of the Seamen’s Friend and Bethel Union
Society, joined the committee of the Auxiliary Bible Society, visited
prisoners and the condemned in the gaol, and helped to found the
Mechanics Institute.” When the government advertised for a “steady man
of good character” to attempt a negotiation with the Aborigines,
Robinson stepped forward.Over the next years, Robinson, known as “the Conciliator,” embarked
on a series of “Friendly Missions” to induce the Aborigines to cease
fighting.At first, most of the colonists reacted to him in the way the Likudists respond to Israeli peaceniks today. The Launceston Advertiser
wrote: “Can it be that we are to thus suffer these people to destroy
our Fellow Colonists, and is the Government to sit down supinely and
view this destruction calmly and preach conciliation? No! rather let the
sentence be extermination.”The killing of Captain Bartholomew Thomas and James Parker by the
Aborigines with whom they were seeking to negotiate fostered a
hysterical clamor for reprisals. The Advertiser claimed the men
were “victims of a mistaken faith in the sincerity of these
blood-thirsty savages” and denounced the “barbarity of a race which no
kindness can soften, and which nothing short of utter annihilation can
subdue.” The Launceston Independent called for “retribution,
deep and lasting, not only upon the perpetrators of the deeds, should
they come within our power, but upon the whole race.”Again, all very familiar. But Robinson did, much to the surprise of
most of the colony, eventually convince the majority of indigenous
people to accept resettlement on Flinders Island.By 1830, indigenous society had been shattered. The population had
been decimated while the number of whites grew by a thousand or more
each year. The historian John West, writing within a few decades of the
Black War, explained that the constant harassment by armed parties meant
that “parents and children had been divided and families had been
broken up in melancholy confusion: indeed, they had ceased to be tribes,
and became what they were called — mobs of natives, composed often of
hereditary enemies. Infanticide and distress, rapid flight, and all the
casualties of a protracted conflict, threatened them with weedy
destruction.”Years later, Robinson himself noted in his diary that there was “not
an aborigine on [the Flinders Island] settlement nor an aborigine that
has been at the settelement but what bears marks of violence perpetrated
upon by them by the depraved whites. Some have musket balls lodged in
them … Some of the natives have slugs in their bodies and others
contusions, all inflicted by whites.”When he approached the surviving indigenous people, Robinson promised
that if they accepted resettlement, their customs and culture would be
respected; they would receive food, houses and blankets; and, most
significantly, they would be able to return to their traditional lands
once the violence had subsided.It must have seemed like a decent offer — or at least the best one they would get.Of course, none of the promises were kept. Whatever Robinson’s
intentions, conciliation engendered less a homeland than a prison: as
Charles Darwin noted during a visit in 1836, “the Aboriginal blacks are
all removed & kept (in reality as prisoners) in a Promontory, the
neck of which is guarded.”The parallels with Palestine are not exact: partly because Israel
confronts a demographic challenge not faced by colonists in Tasmania —
where, from very early on, white settlers constituted a majority — and
partly because, while the settlement in Tasmania was (at the time)
relatively unimportant to the British, Israel plays a crucial role for the American empire.Nonetheless, the similarities are instructive.When, in 1847, forty-seven sick and elderly indigenous people
petitioned to be allowed to leave Flinders Island, the settlers
organized a petition to prevent them, explaining that those who hadn’t
lived through the war could not appreciate what might happen when
“uncivilised creatures with all their savage and bloodthirsty
propensities are admitted [sic] to escape into the bush to perpetrate
all sorts of depredations and atrocities.” The whites might have been
paranoid, but they were not prepared to risk any manifestation of
indigenous independence, which might have sparked further resistance.Likewise, as Shupak says, Israel cannot allow an independent
Palestinian state, because a successful expression of Palestinian
nationalism represents a continuing threat to the project of an
ethnically defined settler colony. Netanyahu has made that explicit,
saying “that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which
we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River
Jordan” — something that effectively rules out a sovereign Palestine.Which is not to say that a two-state solution is entirely impossible.
But if it takes place, it will be akin to Robinson’s “Conciliation”:
the creation of a kind of guarded reserve, a Bantustan or blockaded open-air prison like Gaza rather than a nation exercising real sovereignty.Or, put another way, the kind of state acceptable to the Israelis
(and, for that matter, to the Americans) will be one to which the
Palestinians will only agree if, like the indigenous Tasmanians in 1831,
they’re convinced no other choice remains.Hence the increasingly violent rhetoric coming out of Israel. Unlike
the Tasmanian settlers, the Israeli authorities do not think they can
get away with physically annihilating their enemies. They do, however,
believe sustained violence can sufficiently cow the Palestinians so that
they can be “conciliated,” induced to accept the twenty-first century
of a Flinders Island reserve.For Israel, this is both necessary and urgent, a response to the
so-called demographic time bomb that will bring a Palestinian majority
in “Greater Israel.” That’s Shupak’s point: the current crop of
atrocities is neither an accident nor the result of ill-advised policies
but a logical response by the Israeli regime to the situation in which
it finds itself.In the course of the Gaza incursion, Henry Siegman, former executive director of the American Jewish Congress, was moved to comment:

When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel
to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter
of innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television,
that is really a profound, profound crisis – and should be a profound
crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the
establishment of the state and to its success.

That crisis is necessary and long overdue. The Black War provides a chilling illustration of how settler colonialist dreams end.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Dear friends,please find below my latest article on Palestine published by Red Flag about Israel's ongoing attacks and ethnic cleansing in the Occupied West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem For the last month or so, the RedFlag website has been under digital attack by Zionist hackers due to the paper's unstinting support for Palestine and opposition to Israel's war crimes in Gaza. RedFlag's website is currently back on line, but due to the ongoing attacks by hackers, the editorial staff at Red Flag are also publishing articles in full on the Socialist Alternative facebook page.

Please consider supporting RedFlag by liking and following the SA facebook page (click here) and by taking out a subscription to the paper. If you are in Australia you can get a hard copy sent to your home or a digital version via email. Similarly if you are from outside of Australia, you can also subscribe and receive a digital subscription. To get your subscription, please contact RedFlag via the Socialist Alternative facebook page.In solidarity, Kim***Israeli soldiers detain Palestinians during clashes at a protest against
Israeli military action in Gaza, in the West Bank village of Silwad,
near Ramallah August 15, 2014.
Source: REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

West Bank occupation intensifies10 September 2014, RedFlagby Kim Bullimore
While the eyes of the world were on Israel’s ruthless and unrelenting
50-day bombardment of Gaza, the Zionist state continued its deadly
campaign of murder, occupation, repression and settlement expansion in
the occupied West Bank. At least 32 Palestinians were killed and almost
1, 400 were injured. Figures compiled by the Palestine Liberation
Organisation (PLO) reveal that, between 13 June and 24 August, Israel
detained 1,753 Palestinians (an average of 24 per day) and carried out
1,573 military raids (21 per day). The PLO report, titled “Business as
Usual”, also documented more than 50 home demolitions, which left 112
people homeless, including 66 children. Israeli settlers carried
out 249 attacks (three per day) against Palestinians. Many occurred in
occupied East Jerusalem, where 16-year-old school boy Mohammed Abu
Khdeir previously was kidnapped, tortured and burned alive by settlers.
Israel has also declared more than 400 hectares of Palestinian land
near Bethlehem to be “state land”. This is the biggest land theft in 30
years. According to the Israeli group Peace Now, the 31 August
announcement seeks to turn a “wildcat” settlement, currently consisting
of 10 settler families, into a permanent colony. Since 1967, when
it seized control of and occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and
Gaza, Israel has constructed hundreds more illegal colonies in violation
of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power
from transferring sections of its civilian population into the
territories it occupies. Over the last 20 years, the Zionist
state has repeatedly violated the 1995 Interim Agreement developed in
accordance with Article 7 of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which states:
“Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the
status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the
permanent status negotiations.” Today, more than half a million
Israeli settlers illegally reside in the West Bank and occupied East
Jerusalem, double the figure prior to the Oslo agreement. In the
weeks prior to the 31 August announcement, Israel was continuing its
illegal annexation of Palestinian land and constructing illegal
colonies. Israel approved the building of an additional 1,472 units,
making room for almost 6,000 settlers in the colonies of Gilo, Harhoma
and Giv’at Zeev. Settlement expansion also took place in the illegal
Israeli colonies of Bracha, Yakir and Halamish. During the
assault on Gaza, approximately 1,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel were
arrested for protesting the actions of the Zionist state. Maisa Arshid,
an attorney for dozens of those arrested, told Al Jazeera on 5 August
that in many cases the Israeli authorities had no evidence to justify
the arrests. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted that, between 2
July and 6 August, approximately 1,500 demonstrators, the majority
Palestinian, had been arrested. Some 350 of them are now being
prosecuted for disturbing public order, unlawful gatherings, rioting and
violence against people and property. During the same period, despite a
number of violent protests by Israeli settlers and other Jewish
citizens of Israel, not a single Israeli Jewish citizen was charged or
prosecuted. Palestinian attorney Suhad Bishara from the Legal
Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel told Haaretz: “[T]he wave of
arrests is intended to silence and crush the right of [Palestinian] Arab
citizens to protest, via police violence and hostility. “The
Israel Police treats the Arab community as a potential enemy, and
unfortunately, the court approved many of the police’s requests for
extended remand, even when there was no ground for this.”

Nakba Keys

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About Me

I am an activist who, at different times over several years, has lived and worked as a international volunteer in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog is an account of my time in Palestine and also carries original news, comment and analysis (as well as reprints) on Palestine. Live from Occupied Palestine campaigns for an end to Israeli apartheid and the brutal illegal occupation of the Palestinian people. You are welcome to reprint any material from this blog authored by Kim, however, please acknowledge the author and the blog website